Lily's tale . . .

Our beautiful ray of light, Lily. a photo by Cooperscats Spain on Flickr.

In October 2010 I found Lily sitting in the middle of the drive down to our underground carpark, just about to be run over, because she didn't move when a woman in a car beeped her out of the way.  I ran around for a while like a headless chicken as there was a much bigger kitten about, who ran off, and her mum, hovering in the distance.  She was barely moving, her eyes were oozing pus, she was starving to death.

I made a few fruitless phone calls, and in the end shoved her in my shopping bag and drove to the vet, waited for him to arrive. The veterinary nurse starting cleaning Lily up, and gasped when she realised the right eye socket was full of pus, with no eye in it.  I asked the vet if he thought it would be kinder to put her to sleep as she was in such a state, but he said he was prepared to keep her for a few days to see how she got on. We love that man.

That was on a Tuesday morning, and we brought her home on the Friday night.  Her left eye had also been affected by Feline Herpes Virus (FHV) and was ulcerated, but this has healed through continued treatment, although the eye's surface is scarred and the eye itself is blind.  The FHV has also led to respiratory problems, so Lily has irregular, often shallow, breathing.

The disabilities don't hold her back, she is a regular kitten, bombing about, playing with and chasing Clover and Nutmeg. We don't make many concessions to her blindness, but we are careful not to move furniture around or leave things on the floor for her to run into, and occasionally she needs a helping hand down when she's been too adventurous with her climbing!

Update: 31 March 2012: Because Lily's breathing is so much better these days, she had a chest X-ray to see if her lungs were good enough for her to undergo a spaying operation. The X-ray revealed her lungs are fine, but her heart is too small (the size of a 1kg cat, and she is 3.2kg), and she has an concave sternum. So, she will continue to have hormone injections to prevent the risk of pregnancy and reduce the frequency of her seasons. And she will remain our beautiful, perfect Lily.